Dear Chris, (01)
I'm not arguing that language is not important, just that it is not
ontology. Mostly I hope we are talking about exchange between computers,
so e.g. English language terms are not a critical element - not many
databases read English, and it is between databases that most computers
exchange information. (02)
So in ISO 15926 we distinguish between the thing of interest, and the
term(s) that might be used to designate that thing. Now whilst I accept
that this amounts to giving a meaning to a term, this is a by-blow of
ontologically identifying that there are terms and objects that they
refer to as part of the ontology. (03)
So it worries me if what we think we are really doing is defining terms. (04)
Regards (05)
Matthew (06)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: uos-convene-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:uos-convene-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Chris Menzel
> Sent: 22 February 2006 15:10
> To: Upper Ontology Summit convention
> Cc: Upper Ontology Summit Organizing Committee
> Subject: Re: [uos-convene] RE: Upper Ontology Summit
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 09:09:36AM -0000, West, Matthew R SIPC-DFD/321
> wrote:
> > > Conclusion of the Upper Ontology Summit
> > >
> > > The theory and technology of knowledge representation
> have advanced
> > > to a stage where the concepts that are the meanings of
> terms can be
> > > formally
> >
> > MW: Ontology is supposed to be about what exists, not the meaning of
> > terms.
>
> I think you're equivocating on both "ontology" and "about" here,
> Matthew. True enough, a *given* ontology purports to be about some
> chunk of the world. But we talk about the world by using
> language, and
> surely it is a primary function of an ontology to fix the meanings of
> its component terms with sufficient rigor to faciliate the accurate
> exchange of information. In that sense big-O Ontology -- the nascent
> science of constructing and using little-O ontologies -- is very much
> about meaning. In fact, I would argue that Ontology is much
> more about
> meaning than "what exists". There are perhaps good philosophical
> reasons to think that an ontology is effective in virtue of accurately
> describing what exists -- I believe this myself -- but that is just a
> philosophical stake in the ground that, ultimately, doesn't
> much matter;
> it's more religion than science. Your 4Dism, for example, postulates
> that things that are temporally located in the future relative to us
> nonetheless exist as robustly as we do. Philosophically, I find that
> position repugnant. But, as I've acknowledged before, it might be a
> useful assumption to make for certain knowledge engineering purposes
> like planning, in which case so much the worse for my delicate
> philosophical senstivities. Ultimately, whether or not we are
> describing what there is -- REALLY -- is neither here nor there. The
> question is whether our ontologies *work*, whether the axioms and
> definitions we provide for the terms they contain provide effective,
> well-defined, systematic characterizations of the phenomena we have
> found it important for our purposes to represent.
>
> Chris Menzel
>
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> (07)
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